Theres not much on this forum about DSP programming... one of the few threads i found:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=18746


i guess DSP programming may be one of the most extreme arts of programming - only meant for legendary hardcore developers.

Not neceserily only because its difficult learning DSP assembler, on top of arm assembler (which itself should require much dedication to maintain the massive knowledge and education) - but also that the DSP's usefulness is within some limited target applications.


Now to the questions:

1. Whats so special with the DSP? is it really worthwhile developing for a 430mhz DSP rather than a 600mhz CPU? i know Mhz vs. Mhz can be a whole science, so to make the question short: Where does the DSP shine, from a system level perspective? (...Floating point calculations? MOV's?)

2. Can the DSP be used in conjunction/simultaneously with the CPU on the N900? or does it generate too much overhead on the BUS?

3. Which applications can benefit from using the DSP?
i would guess all kinds of sound and video encoding/decoding is where it shines? But why is that? Can it also be used for regular file compression (ZIP/RAR)?

4. Are there any tools available to compile and build code? Will it cause any software conflicts running such code builds in Maemo? i would guess it isnt a good idea to try using the camera video recording while simultaneously using the DSP for other activities - there hardly would be any resource handling or multitasking kernel running for the DSP...